Positive identity verification is critical in many types of transactions and security procedures. For example, signatures, fingerprints or images of faces are compared to establish identity. Creation of fraudulent identities or the misrepresentation of an individual's identity can result in fraudulent transactions and the breach of security systems. At present, such positive identification means as driver's licenses, picture identification cards, hand-written signatures, personal identification numbers, fingerprints, retinal scans, voice prints and other ways of uniquely identifying personal characteristics are used. However, these prior art methods of identity verification exhibit one or more of the following deficiencies: 1) they do not offer sufficient reliability for most positive personal identification applications; 2) the technology required for their implementation is too expensive for wholesale adoption by entire industries; 3) they do not offer ease of use, which is critical for most applications of personal identification; 4) the technology required to implement them in a wide-scale manner is not yet mature enough to guarantee sufficient reliability; 5) the recurring cost of using technology is too high for most applications of personal identification; 6) the data used for identity verification is not maintained in a secure manner and is almost universally held by the person presenting it as the form of verification, thereby allowing for fraudulent alteration of the verification data; 7) processes for building accurate verification databases for wide-spread use are impractical; and 8) the process of verification does not include sufficient steps to ensure that the individual responsible for identity verification is accountable to ensure that identity verification is accurately performed.
One class of situations where positive identification is essential involves non cash-based financial transactions, including credit/debit card and check-based financial transactions. Credit cards are an increasingly popular means for consumers to complete transactions. However, part of the costs incurred for the convenience of using credit cards is the burgeoning growth of credit card fraud. Because there are trillions of dollars of credit card transactions made each year, which depend on the fact that the person presenting the form of payment is actually the person having the legal right to use the underlying account, even a small percentage of fraudulent transactions results in billions of lost dollars. The cost of this fraud is paid for, indirectly, by consumers in the form of higher credit card interest rates and fees and, in part, by merchants accepting such credit cards in the form of higher transaction commissions. Check fraud is also a significant problem faced by consumers and financial institutions.
Methods used to combat fraud have been the use of holographic images on credit cards, the need for a validation requester to obtain transaction approval, the encoding of cardholder information on magnetic strips on the back of the card, as well as signature verification. A number of patents have issued on identification devices and methods. Of particular note is U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,751, issued to Ray, et al. on Jun. 14, 1994. Other prior art references of note are U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,358, issued to Axelrod, et al. on Aug. 9, 1994, U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,196, issued to Miyata on Mar. 10, 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,025, issued to Monroe, et al. on Nov. 2, 1993, U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,081, issued to Leighton, et al. on Feb. 19, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 4,991,205, issued to Lemelson on Feb. 5, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,608, issued to Senanayake on Oct. 1, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,131,038, issued to Puhl, et al. on Jul. 14, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,068, issued to Piosenka, et al. on Feb. 12, 1991. As noted above, one of the underlying deficiencies of all of these prior art identification systems is that they all rely, in some manner, on information encoded on the credit card being presented. While some of these references include sophisticated encryption algorithms, the fact remains that giving access to the information to the card users lends itself to the potential for reverse engineering and overcoming even the most sophisticated of encryption means.
In recent past, Citibank introduced a credit card with a digital likeness of the authorized user provided on the card itself. As the Ray patent discloses, the photographic image on the Citibank card resulted in an initial drop in fraud in the New York test market estimated as high as 67 percent. However, as Ray also explains, the Citibank photo card system, like other forms of identity verification that are distributed to the public, will eventually be defeated by sophisticated counterfeiting.
An additional difficulty with most prior art verification methods is that they all require the use of a special credit card incorporating some form of identification means. Thus, in order for their use to gain widespread acceptance, replacement of existing credit cards and credit manufacturing equipment must be accomplished.
On Aug. 12, 1997, the assignee of the present invention was granted U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,389, which discloses a significant advance in positive identification systems and methods and which is fully incorporated herein by reference. This system and method segregates the identification medium from the credit card or the like, in an attempt to curb the likelihood of fraudulent transactions. However, even the sophisticated, distributed positive identification system and method taught in the '389 Patent could be overcome by fraudulent system registrations, where criminals manufacture identities and either fraudulently register these identities in association with credit card accounts owned by others or obtain separate accounts associated with their fraudulent identities. In these situations, even one or two fraudulent transactions perpetrated on a fraudulent account, when combined with the ability to obtain a number of such fraudulent identities and account associations, can result in significant identity-based fraud losses.
Accordingly, the disclosed invention offers a system and method of assessing the quality of a particular identification transaction, which is aimed at identifying transactions where heightened scrutiny should be instituted. Conversely, the disclosed system and method also identifies those identification transactions where there is little or no possibility that a identity-based fraud is occurring.